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EVE Evolved: Lowsec isn't impenetrable
When EVE Online was created, one of its core design philosophies was the idea of risk vs. reward -- that higher-value activities should expose the player to greater risk of loss. This rule naturally follows from how the world of business and competition works in real life, and I think it will always arise organically from sandbox MMOs with limited resources. If something's risk-free and easy to do, you can bet there are countless other people already doing it and squeezing the profit margins. This idea was also built into EVE at a fundamental level, with the galaxy split into police-protected high-security systems, the pirate-infested low-security borders between nations, and the chaotic uncolonised wilderness of nullsec. The steep step up in risk when transitioning from high- to low-security space has always been a major point of contention with gamers, as those who don't know any better often charge straight into deep space to their deaths. The story of the newbie working his way up to get his first cruiser or battlecruiser and then losing it to pirates is repeated so often on forums and in the comments sections of articles that it's almost become a cliche. While the idea that pirates wait around every corner lingers on, this impenetrable barrier hiding all the best content from new players no longer really exists. Through the addition of wormholes and the changes made in Rubicon, no star system is now off limits to a pilot with just a few months of skill training under his belt. In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at what you can do to safely travel and operate in EVE's dangerous areas, why the barrier into low-security space needs to remain low for new players, and how CCP has expanded the EVE universe through the introduction of riskier areas of space.
Starbound beta starts today
Starbound developer Chucklefish began sending out beta keys for the PC, Mac and Linux game today. Those who backed the space-faring exploration game should see a Steam key in their inboxes momentarily, and the developer says a direct download version of the game will be available "as soon as we are able to efficiently provide it." The Terraria-like game's official site reveals that over $2.6 million was raised by 124,176 backers in the developer's ongoing crowdfunding efforts. Starbound features procedurally-generated worlds in which players must gather supplies to take on quests. The "story in a sandbox" game received a new trailer to commemorate the launch of its beta version, which features some of its side-scrolling action.
EVE dev blog covers Rubicon ship rebalancing
EVE Online's 20th expansion, Rubicon, goes live on November 19th. Rubicon brings many changes to EVE including mobile structures, new faction ships, controllable customs offices, and a completely overhauled warping system. And of course, Rubicon includes adjustments big and small to a wide variety of the ships already flying in New Eden. CCP today posted a summary dev blog outlining the changes due with Rubicon for each ship type. Interceptors are receiving role bonuses that make them immune to warp bubbles, electronic attack ships are seeing range increases and general upgrades, interdictors are getting increased survivability and higher damage output, and marauders are receiving a complete functionality revision that splits the ship type into two distinct roles. Check out the full post for details. And if you haven't already, have a look at Brendan's EVE Evolved from yesterday so you'll be ready for these and other big Rubicon changes.
EVE Evolved: Getting ready for Rubicon
EVE Online's Rubicon expansion goes live in just two days on Tuesday, November 19th, introducing four brand-new personal deployable structures and revamping PvP across the board with a seemingly innocuous warp acceleration fix. The expansion represents the first step in new Senior Producer Andie Nordgren's plan to bring true player-run deep-space colonisation to EVE Online. The new Mobile Depot that can be placed anywhere in space is possibly the most sandboxy feature since the introduction of player-owned starbases back in 2004. Players have been coming up with plans for the device since its first announcement, but I think we'll see its true potential revealed in the coming weeks and months. If you've been saving up your Sisters of EVE loyalty points to get your hands on the faction's new exploration ships, be prepared to buy and build the blueprints as soon as the server comes up. These will be the first pirate faction ship blueprints that are available in high-security space, and a recent devblog confirmed that players have been collecting Sisters of EVE loyalty points like crazy lately in anticipation of the expansion, but those who get the built ships to market first will make an absolute killing. For the rest of us, getting ready for the expansion means planning where to set up a Mobile Depot for some quick profit-making enterprise or building a few small PvP ships to put the new warp speed mechanics to the test. In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at some of the best places to set up a Mobile Depot, re-consider the lure of low-security space, and propose adapting your PvP fleets to take advantage of the warp acceleration changes.
EVE Evolved: Ghost Sites and PvE goals
PvE in most MMOs revolves around killing hordes of NPCs for currency, XP, tokens, or loot, and EVE Online is no exception. Players can hunt for rare pirate ships in nullsec asteroid belts, farm Sansha incursions for ISK and loyalty points, or team up against Sleeper ships in dangerous wormhole space, but most prefer the safe and steady income of mission-running. Missions are essentially repeatable quests that can be spawned on request, providing an endless stream of bad guys to blow up in the comfort of high-security space. Completing a mission will earn you some ISK and a few hundred or thousand loyalty points, but most of the ISK in mission-running comes from the bounties on the NPCs spawned in the mission sites. Similar deadspace sites with better loot are also distributed randomly throughout the galaxy and can be tracked down using scanner probes. But what would happen if the NPCs in these sites were a dangerous and unexpected interference that could get you killed, rather than space piñatas ready to explode in a shower of ISK? This is a question CCP plans to test with the Rubicon expansion's upcoming Ghost Sites feature, which promises to introduce a whole new form of high-risk, high-reward PvE. In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at EVE's upcoming ghost sites and explain why I think its goal-oriented approach to PvE should be adopted in other areas of the game.
EVE Online unveils the Sisters of EVE ships
New ships in EVE Online are kind of a big deal. A new ship isn't just a set of equipment slots, it can represent a whole different way of playing the game. The two newest ships being introduced with the game's next expansion are meant to do precisely that, providing players with a new level of security while exploring hostile space. These ships are the craft of the Sisters of EVE, and they're coming with the game's next major update. The latest development blog explains that the goal with these ships was to provide more support for solo exploration while allowing the ship to take a variety of different equipment for variable missions. Both classes of ship (the Astero and the Stratios) can use covert cloaks, feature increased scan probe and virus strength, and have extra module space that sacrifices some strength for vesatility. For more details on fitting and obtaining these ships, check out the full development dispatch.
Embers of Caerus exploration demo now available
Indie sandbox MMO Embers of Caerus is now playable. Well, sorta. The team at Forsaken Studios has released a single-player exploration demo designed to get you puttering around a portion of the gameworld. Access requires a valid community account according to Forsaken technical director Dave Belcher. Embers of Caerus is a fantasy sandbox set in a sprawling gameworld and featuring everything from naval combat to GM-driven dynamic events. The game was initially announced in 2011. [Thanks Aganauton!]
Go on a 2D adventure with your loser friends in Night in the Woods
Adventure/exploration game Night in the Woods achieved its $50,000 goal on Kickstarter after one day on the funding platform. The indie story-focused game comes from Infinite Fall, a two-person team composed of Aquaria developer Alec Holowka and animator Scott Benson. Night in the Woods has players exploring the town Possum Springs as college dropout Mae, a cat with recently-developed "paranormal abilities." Mae joins a ragtag group of "loser friends," including a bear named Angus, described as "that kid in school who wore ties and fedoras for no good reason." Mae's growing abilities grant her access to new parts of the town as the adventure wears on, including an area near Possum Springs' old mine where "something in the woods" resides. Night in the Woods is planned for PC and Mac, and is currently estimated to launch in January 2015. The Kickstarter project will close on November 22.
Wasteland 2 update lifts fog on how you'll explore, and die, in the wastes
Taking a hike through the world of Wasteland 2 will be fraught with danger and discovery. An update on the game's Kickstarter page has revealed how exploration will work in inXile Entertainment's upcoming post-nuclear apocalypse RPG, as well as the guiding principles behind its design. The basic map experience, according to Montgomery Markland, a producer on Wasteland 2, is one of exploration, discovery and survival. The game's map will be broken into a 3D version which renders your immediate surroundings, and a 2D version that shows the overall region, as well as the location of settlements, resources and "sites." Sites in Wasteland 2 are described by Markland as "minor locations such as an abandoned mine or a highway roadblock." No matter where you go, however, death awaits. Along with keeping an eye out for attacks from random monsters and other survivors, players will also need to watch their Geiger counter. The land is irradiated, and wandering into pockets of dense radiation can result in instant death. Even if you avoid radiation poisoning however, the world of Wasteland 2 can still kill you via dehydration. "Water management is challenging and important," Markland writes. "Your water supply is based upon the number of rangers in your squad and the number of canteens among them. Depending on the type of terrain you are traversing, your water supply is consumed at varying rates." Man, who'd have thought the end of the world would be so rough?
PSA: The Stanley Parable is out now, 20 percent off
The Stanley Parable is now available on Steam, and is 20 percent off ($11.99) until October 23. Originally a Half-Life 2 mod, the first-person exploration game centers on Stanley, employee number 427 of a nameless company, who pushes buttons on a keyboard at his desk as instructions appear on a monitor. Compared to the 2011 mod, The Stanley Parable "returns with new content, new ideas, a fresh coat of visual paint," and voice-overs by Kevan Brighting. The game's description underscores the "everything is not as it seems" nature of the game, as over time "meaning begins to arise, the paradoxes might start to make sense." Developer Galactic Cafe encourages players to check out the game's demo to learn more, which is also available through Steam.
Proteus launching on PS3 and Vita this month with new world generation options
Curve Studios' "video dream" Proteus will launch this month on PS3 and Vita. The exploration game will include new world creation features on the Sony platforms. Players can generate their worlds using the Vita's location-tracking option and by using the current date on both PS3 and Vita. Also, players will have the chance to "remix" their worlds by using the Vita's back touch panel, and can still let the game randomly create their pixelated dreamscape. Proteus first launched on PC and Mac in January. For those that can't wait for the PS3 and Vita versions, it is available on both Steam and DRM-free through the game's official site DRM-free for $10.
Roberts on Star Citizen's exploration gameplay, publisher-free development
Gamasutra has just published an interview with Cloud Imperium head honcho Chris Roberts. Much of the piece is old news if you've followed the game closely (also, the interview was conducted over a month ago at Gamescom), but there are still some juicy quotes from the space sim guru regarding his dream game's non-combat mechanics and publisher-free development cycle. Community interaction and open development is allowing CIG to build a more relevant title, Roberts says. "We had all of these things like bounty hunter, mercenary, pirate, merchant, explorer. And I was shocked that 67 percent of the people [Cloud Imperium surveyed] said that they wanted to be an explorer," Roberts said. CIG wouldn't have known how many players prefer non-combat gameplay under the old design-your-game-in-a-vacuum model. Roberts also talks at length about the benefits of developing publisher-free. For one thing, Roberts says, developing SC at EA or Activision would require $40 to $50 million, whereas doing it at a more efficient indie outfit allows him to get the same functionality for half that cost. "I do feel like there's a shift in the business with what's happening right now, with the ability to be online and connect directly to the community and the fans," Roberts says. "We essentially don't need any publishing functions because we're connecting directly to people, and normally that's what a publisher would do for you."
Wander winds its way to the PS4
At PAX Prime, players who yearned for more to a game than just combat were treated to a glimpse of a game that doesn't even have combat. Aptly named Wander, this game's focus is on collaborative exploration and discovery. Currently the game runs on Linux, PC, and OS X, but today Creative Director Loki Davison announced that the Oculus Rift-supporting title will be available on the PlayStation 4. What can players expect when wandering in Wander? Explorable land totals 64 square kilometres so far and players will start off as a giant tree exploring a rainforest. Throughout their journeys, they can morph into a total of five different forms: Ent, Polynesian Elf Girl, Griffon, Azertash (sea creature), and Thylacine (Tasmanian Tiger). You can get a taste of the world in the gallery below. [Source: Wander Game press release]
PAX Prime 2013: Exploring Wander with creator Loki Davison
Wander is an MMO that eschews the primary mechanics of traditional titles and instead relies on what creator Loki Davison refers to as "collaborative exploration." Designed to recreate the feeling you get when you discover something beautiful in real life and rush home to tell your friends, Wander has no maps, checkpoints, or objectives. The only ways to uncover the game's secrets are to discover them yourself or have another player show you the way. Our own Jasmine Hrushcak snagged some time with Wander and its creator at PAX Prime 2013 and managed to ask a few questions in between acrophobic Oculus Rift-induced panic attacks.
EVE Evolved: Colonising deep space
If you were watching the news coming out of this year's EVE Online Fanfest, you no doubt heard Senior Producer Andie Nordgren's incredibly ambitious five year vision. The past few expansions have been mostly filled with bug fixes and improvements to existing gameplay, but the goal is now to begin delivering an epic vision of deep space exploration, colonisation, and PvP raids on enemy infrastructure. The five year roadmap toward this goal includes the addition of player-built stargates and completely uncharted solar systems to locate, explore and build an empire in. If the very idea of that doesn't make shivers go down your spine, something may be wrong with your central nervous system. CCP has opened new space before with the addition of the drone regions in nullsec and some new lowsec systems for faction warfare, but it wasn't until 2009's Apocrypha expansion that we saw a true exploration and long-term colonisation effort get underway. I think the intoxicating draw of wormhole exploration was primarily due to the fact that the new systems were hidden and the information on them wasn't public. Just adding new solar systems to the existing stargate network wouldn't have had the same effect. Nordgren's vision may take up to 10 expansions to fully realise, but what kinds of features will we need in those expansions to recreate true exploration and deep space colonisation? In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at some of the challenges CCP will have to overcome to make deep space colonisation a reality and what small steps could be taken in each expansion to get us there.
The Mog Log: The mandatory early dungeons of Final Fantasy XIV
You're going to be exploring at least three dungeons in Final Fantasy XIV no matter what, possibly more. Progression in the main story requires a trip through Sastasha Seagrot, the Tam-Tara Deepcroft, and Copperbell Mines. While I've talked a great deal about the ethics of including this grouping experience, what I haven't really discussed are the actual dungeons themselves, even though that's certainly a big deal. Let's be honest here: If this stuff isn't fun, all of the talk about the validity of forced grouping is kind of pointless. Even if you can, there are times when you shouldn't. Fortunately for the long-term viability of these dungeons, all three have more than just nice loot (which is apparently shared between them); they also offer a fun ride through regardless. So as you could probably infer from all of the text up to this point, let's take a gander at the first three dungeons in the game and the ones we know for a fact you have to clear right off.
Pocket Spacecraft launches crowdsourced lunar mission on Kickstarter (video)
As space exploration becomes democratized, the entry price for such endeavors has fallen dramatically. One company taking advantage of this is Pocket Spacecraft, a Bristol-based enterprise that thinks it can send thousands of personalized probes to the heavens for a few hundred dollars apiece. While it may look more like a used coffee filter, the Earth Scout / Lunar Scout is a CD-sized, paper-thin probe that contains a bonded solar cell, system-on-a-chip and antennas. Several thousand of these will be loaded onto a CubeSat and then dropped onto Earth or the Moon, depending on your project and contribution. Users who cough up the cash will then be able to observe how thin, papery probes journey downward, with telemetry being sent to an Android / iOS app. Anyone interested in backing the project on Kickstarter should check out the video after the break and then empty their savings of £99 ($150) to buy an Earth scout or £199 ($302) if they intend to explore the Moon.
Captain's Log: A new Star Trek Online potpourri
One thing is certain: Many players have returned to Star Trek Online since the Legacy of Romulus expansion was released. Many new players have also given Star Trek Online their first try and are suitably impressed with the game's improvement. Bug patches are forthcoming, and server crashes have been reduced over the past couple of weeks. Many players who have started new Romulan Republic characters and have reached level cap (50) are now turning their attention to the endgame material. Still others have decided to start their very first Klingon character. But what about stuff that isn't about Legacy of Romulus? It just so happens there are lots of "little" items to cover, so join me while I go over some of the news and tidbits that have popped up recently.
EVE Evolved: First impressions of Odyssey
The Odyssey expansion has been live for a couple of days now, but it's already starting to have a massive impact on EVE Online. Traffic through low-security space has increased significantly for the first time in years thanks to explorers hunting data and relic sites, and some players are even hunting asteroid belt NPCs in lowsec for the new security tags. New wars have erupted in nullsec following the redistribution of moon wealth, mining has become a more valuable profession, and the rebalanced battleships feel powerful again. Unfortunately, Odyssey has seen its fair share of problems too. The new jump effect looks spectacular the first few times you see it, but long-term play is reportedly causing motion sickness in some players. Some players have also been objecting to the ice mining changes, and the revamped radial UI menu hasn't done much to fix the game's usability problems. Explorers in low-security space and nullsec are reporting incomes in the billions of ISK per day range thanks to the scan probe changes and new hacking minigame, but not everyone is happy with the new loot-scattering mechanic. In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at the early impact of Odyssey on the EVE Online universe and discover the secrets behind collecting all the valuable loot when hacking.
EVE Evolved: Get ready for Odyssey
With just two days to go until EVE Online's exploration-focused Odyssey expansion goes live, players have been scouring the test server for information that can give them an edge. Some have been practicing moon surveying techniques for the upcoming redistribution of tech 2 minerals, and others are hoping to get rich quick by speculating on battleship price changes. Explorers are kitting out new exploration ships, theorycrafters are working on new setups for rebalanced ships, and pirates are setting up base in lowsec areas that are about to become fertile hunting grounds. Odyssey isn't quite the Apocrypha-level expansion I've been hoping for, but it certainly seems set to shake things up. Changes to moon minerals will throw nullsec into chaos and hopefully ignite some big territorial wars, and battleship buffs may change EVE's popular fleet compositions. The Discovery Scanner Overlay will make exploration much easier for new players to get into, but will also give pirates another tool with which to hunt down explorers. A new co-operative hacking minigame will also make exploration more of a team sport. But how can you make the most of the expansion from day one, and what can you do today to prepare for it? In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at the new exploration system and other changes you can expect when you log in on Tuesday, and what you can do now to make the most of them.
